


Let's Get Old And Boring

by TazHernandez



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: M/M, So I deleted and reposted this bc I was running a hella high fever when I originally wrote/posted, The Newt/OCs are very brief, and I rewrote it NOT under the influence of a fever, but anyway, these guys are so emotionally constipated, two dummies in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-24 12:23:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20705957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TazHernandez/pseuds/TazHernandez
Summary: After they close the Breach, Newt doesn’t stop moving. He writes papers and gets an agent and becomes the science rockstar he always dreamed of being, he hops from apartment to apartment and never bothers unpacking because he knows he’ll be gone soon anyway, he blazes through life like a goddamn meteor, okay, and if he ends up leaving behind some things in his headlong rush who can blame him? He’s got momentum for days, couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, right?Except even Newt can’t keep up that pace.Newt is living his rockstar life and sure, he never really sleeps or chills out and he kinda never moved into his apartment but everything is AWESOME, totally great, until one day... it isn't. Lonely and a bit maudlin, he starts checking up on his old Shatterdome buds and comes to the horrible realization that Hermann is dating someone. Someone who is NOT NEWT.Jealousy-fueled hijinks ensue.





	1. Seasons are changing

**Author's Note:**

> Of course the first fic I ever post is about these two emotionally-constipated idiot scientists. First fic, please be kind, please join me in laughing at these two fools. Say hi at undine-taz.tumblr.com if you're so inclined.
> 
> Edit 9/19/19
> 
> So I wrote this first chapter while I had a high fever and then published it while still loopy as all hell. I read it afterwards and decided I could do better, and so I went ahead and rewrote the whole thing. It's WAY different now, but I think better. Hope you enjoy!

After they close the Breach, Newt doesn’t stop _moving _. He writes papers and gets an agent and becomes the science rockstar he always dreamed of being, he hops from apartment to apartment and never bothers unpacking because he knows he’ll be gone soon anyway, he blazes through life like a goddamn _meteor, _okay, and if he ends up leaving behind some things in his headlong rush who can blame him? He’s got momentum for days, couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, right?

Except even Newt can’t keep up that pace. He’s stomping through some park somewhere in America, heading off to yet another convention where he’ll get up on a stage and blast science to screaming crowds of adoring fans-okay, more lecture like interestedly-murmuring clumps of esteemed colleagues, but whatevs- when he looks up and realizes that he has no idea where the hell he even is anymore. He breathes in deep, and crisp, cold air curls in his lungs. He can smell woodsmoke under the astringent cold, warm and spicy and thrilling. Bright orange and yellow leaves crunch under his steel-toed Doc Martens, and he can hear a group of kids absolutely howling with laughter somewhere.

Without even noticing, he’s stopped walking entirely, and he absent-mindedly kicks a little pile of leaves in front of him. He watches the leaves scatter and some bugs who had been hiding out in their scamper for cover and feels like a dick for destroying their house. He stoops down to messily rebuild the pile before starting back toward the convention, slower this time.

When the hell did fall come around? The last time he had been in America, it had been the ass-end of spring when things were starting to really heat up and he had been in some weird conservative humid hell-hole of a state lecturing about the resilience of Kaiju skin and being force-fed fried alligator and pig intestine stuffed with rice.

Before that he had been in Seattle, and he had really felt like a rockstar there. Everyone was young and hot and seemed really into the whole “drifting with a Kaiju” thing, and Newt had spent a few very fun nights with a gorgeous barista and her equally hot drummer boyfriend. He hadn’t even been able to tell what season it was because it rained the whole damn time he was there and he spent most of it either in a hotel or in the convention center.

“Fuck,” Newt said aloud, coming to a standstill and staring dramatically into the horizon. There was a burst of muffled giggles to his left and a small (what do you call a group of kids? A gaggle? A herd? Newt was gonna go with a gaggle) gaggle of kids ran past him in scandalized hilarity.

There was a blonde soccer mom giving him one hell of a glare from where she was sitting with a baby stroller and a tennis visor and how the hell did Newt manage to wander into the park’s playground anyway?

Newt gave her a weak smile and hightailed it the hell out of there before the soccer mom could summon a herd and beat him to death with fanny packs. That would be the least rockstar way to die ever.

***

He makes it to the lecture with plenty of time to spare, even after stopping to get the sweetest, shittiest coffee he could find (pumpkin spice latte with extra whipped cream and caramel _and _sprinkles on top, just to be an extra shit.)

He lectures, the audience mumbles appreciatively, he gets asked a lot of dumb questions by his so-called peers who weren’t even fucking _there, what the fuck do they even know- _and then skips the after-conference drinks and nibbles to drift back to his apartment.

Normally when he gets back he throws off all his clothes and crashes onto his bed and he’s out until his agent calls him to drag his ass out of bed and to a lecture, or a meet-up, or a book-signing, or some other shit. 

Today he actually flips on the light and _looks. _Sees the boxes that have dust on them because they haven’t been opened for a month and the bed whose sheets he’s never changed- _disgusting, Newton, _a prim British-accented voice whispers from the back of his skull, and oh, fuck, when was the last time he heard that voice anywhere but his head- and the couch buried under the piles of dirty clothes that he’ll put off washing until he has literally nothing else to wear.

Before, he just saw it as the house of a rock star, always on the move, never settling down, rolling stones don’t grow no moss and all that shit- but he suddenly realizes that maybe it’s just depressing. 

He’s not sure how long he just stands and stares, but eventually he realizes he’s fucking _starving. _He’s pretty sure he hasn’t eaten anything since the coffee, and he knows for a fact that he hadn’t eaten anything before that. Newt has a forlorn hope that maybe this whole weird epiphany thing that’s totally harshing his rockstar buzz is some sort of weird sugar crash, but then remembers it started before he even got the coffee and heaves a dramatic sigh.

Normally he’d just get take-out, but the idea of food cooked by strangers is weirdly unappealing. Suddenly he just wants his dad’s Sauerbraten, followed by a giant slice of Geiszler family secret plum cake. He hasn’t had it since before they closed the Breach, even, and that strikes Newt as horribly depressing.

Newt heads to the tiny-ass kitchen in the hopes of rustling something up, but is rudely reminded that when you want to cook you have to actually have bought ingredients sometime in the last century. He’s got milk that’s weeks past its drink-by date which he’s pretty sure is actually growing undiscovered colonies of bacteria and if he weren’t so hungry he’d be tempted to take ‘em out and put ‘em under a microscope, a single bottle of ketchup that he thinks may have been left by the previous resident, and a chunk of bread so hard that when Newt drops it on the floor it actually _cracks in half, what the fuck. _

Newt spends an hour scrounging around his pantry before finally coming up with an ancient packet of ramen. It looks like it’s older than Newt himself, but he figures it’s physically impossible for ramen to go that bad, right? He doesn’t have a pot, so he ends up microwaving the ramen in yesterday’s butter chicken takeout container. The noodles somehow manage to be both crunchy and mushy and wildly unappealing, but it’s warm and he made it himself and the cheap, bright synthetic chicken kicks him straight back to the Shatterdome.

Wild, frenetic, kinetic energy, day in and day out. The bright blue of Kaiju blood seared into his very retinas, until looking away felt somehow _wrong, _like everything else was too smudgy and warm and pink after the bright bitter blue. The endless iteration of frustration and desperation and inspiration bursting inside him with the thunder and crackle of fireworks until he could feel the rumble of it in his _chest, _the highest highs and lowest lows he had ever experienced in his life. 

And through it all, Hermann. The solid constant that kept Newt tethered, whose own gravity hauled Newt into a wobbly orbit instead of letting him burn and blaze and disintegrate somewhere off in the distance. Whose sneers and yells and pokes and proddings and sarcastic brilliance and poorly concealed warmth and crappy sweater vests always always always pulled Newt in when he was going too far., took Newt’s excess energy like a goddamn lightning rod in the middle of a storm and then brushed it off with a curled lip and a raised brow and a “_ Really, _Newton, was that entirely necessary?” Before giving Newt back as good as he got.

When they closed the Breach, he had finally given in and scooped Hermann’s bony ass into an honest-to-God _hug, _and Hermann had looked at him with the edges of his big brown doe eyes crinkled from the smile not even the famous Gottlieb dignity could repress. And then… and then… and then what? 

Newt remembered a long, intense party. He had gotten hella wasted, even though it was a terrible idea and he could feel Hermann’s disapproval somewhere at the base of his skull (it was still there in his dreams, a thready whisper of crisp, clean lines drawn with mathematical rigor, the gentle susurration of binary that never fails to send tingles sweeping up the back of his neck) and he could remember getting emails from universities _already _, it had only been a few hours, what the fuck? And he got an email from an _agent, an actual agent, holy SHIT!_

And after that, it all blurred. Newt saw lectures and publicity tours and signings and TV deals and missed calls from Tendo and his father and Mako and _Hermann- _and Newt heard his own voice answering the phone to yell that he was off to a new lecture and would “Catch ya later, Herms” and saw texts cancelling plans because a tv spot opened up and his agent told him he absolutely HAD to take it. 

“Oh, fuck,” Newt says for the second time that day, even deeper and more heartfelt than the first time. It’s more of a groan, really, and it comes from some pit deep in his belly, the pit he only gets when he knows he’s got a metric fuck-ton of mistakes suspended over his head. He yanks his phone out of his tight ass-pocket, hoping against hope for some tiny bit of salvation and knowing he’s not going to get any. Sure enough, Hermann hasn’t texted in _three months. _He scrolls back over their text conversations- hella scattered and really rare on his part, and gradually getting more and more sporadic on Hermann’s. If he tried to graph Hermann’s texts he’s pretty sure it would be the saddest little line ever, with less of a slope and more of a slump, as Hermann pretty clearly started giving up hope after about a year.

Hermann held out longer than everyone else, at least. Tendo hasn’t messaged him in a year, Mako in two, although his dad still sent him updates on everyone pretty regularly- poor guy was used to Newt getting distracted and up and vanishing after stuff with the Breach got too crazy and he was spending all his time working and arguing with Hermann. 

Except that wasn’t quite true- yeah, he’d get pretty distracted dissecting some badass new Kaji bits and he’d forget to call or text, but then Hermann would come along and lift his prim nose in the air and _sniff _disapprovingly at Newt and talk about his _filial duty _like that wasn’t totally rich coming from a guy who hadn’t talked to his father since the whole Wall of Life fiasco, and somehow Newt would find himself calling up his dad just to rub how good a son he was in Hermann’s dumb face with his weird, wide, kissable lips and cheekbones that could cut glass.

Without Hermann, he’d just charged mindlessly forward without anything to check himself before he wrecked himself, and now here he was, a meteor slamming into the rockstar life and burning up and burning out. He hadn’t even noticed it, too caught up in the blaze of his own glory, but Newt- Newt was fucking _tired. _And. Maybe lonely? He looked around at his dim apartment, sickly yellow lights barely illuminating dun-colored walls and a goddamn popcorn ceiling and surrounded on all sides by unopened boxes and revised a bit. _Definitely _lonely. Desperately, pathetically, miserably lonely and totally unable to notice it until the actual moment of impact.

“Oh, fuck,” Newt says again, completing the trifecta and putting the cherry on top of the most pathetic epiphany of his life.

****

Newt gives himself some wallowing time because even though he has no one to blame for this but himself he’s too sad to do anything more than yank off everything but his Godzilla boxers and curl himself into a blanket-lump on the sofa. He only gets up to call his agent and tell her to cancel everything for the next two weeks. The call quickly devolves into a shouting match between the two of them with her refusing to cancel because “These are such great opportunities, Newt, you can’t pass these up for some sort of random whim!” and Newt positively _howling _down the phone at her and gibbering in rage about big, beautiful brown eyes and bony ankles and how he _screwed up big time _and he hangs up on her saying she has no idea what the hell he’s talking about. Then he puts on the BBC _Pride and Prejudice _series and if the stuffy British accents and sheer uptightness and Victorian-ness of it sometimes made him tear up, well, there was no one there to judge him.

He allows himself two full days of truly extravagant wallowing before getting up and Making A Plan.

Newt never used to plan, but he picked up some weird stuff in the drift-like an inexplicable taste for black licorice, what the fuck was that about- and he had to admit to himself that the planning thing was kind of useful. Especially since Newt had the sinking feeling that Operation Somehow-Rebuild-Every-Significant-Relationship-In-Your-Life (Newt would think of a snappier title later) wasn’t something he could reliably wing. 

Tendo and his dad and the rest would probably accept shitty half-assed apologies, but for Hermann he would have to whole-ass it.

Newt allowed himself one more viewing of _Pride and Prejudice _(the 2005 one this time because that hand touch killed him every time, turned him into a snivelling puddle of goo) before hauling himself off the couch and getting to work.


	2. Oh, I'd Rather Rot in Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt gets to planning and information-gathering, a wild Tendo appears, and a pretty big spanner is thrown in the works.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! From here on out I plan to post chapters on Sundays. I have.... no idea how long this is going to be, but I don't think it's going to be more than 10 chapters. If you want to say hi, I'm undine_taz on tumblr. Have a great day :)

After about an hour of pacing and brainstorming and yelling out loud and waving his arms dramatically, Newt decides to start with Tendo. He needs  _ information,  _ and Mako is way too sweet and way too uninterested in people’s personal lives. Tendo has a serious love of digging up the juiciest of details and getting every bit of dirt. Newt wants personal details so he can prove that he hasn’t just been totally oblivious for the last three years, he doesn’t want blackmail material, but he’s a scientist. He loves data, loves information, and okay yeah maybe Newt is a bit of a gossip too and he’s kinda excited to catch up on some drama.

He goes to grab his phone and realizes he’s still just in his boxers and definitely doesn’t even have pockets to put a phone in. He runs around the apartment looking for it, taking the chance to do some serious sock sliding down the wooden floors and around the open doorways before he finds his phone still in the pants he abandoned on the floor a few days ago.

His hands are shaking as he types, and he takes a minute to chill out and take a breath. He’s not even sure what he’s shaking about, it’s just his friends. Just Hermann. Yeah, he was an idiot, but his friends were used to it. He knew most of them would grumble and roll their eyes and then they’d sigh and say “Oh, that’s just Newt,” and then everything would be okay again and it’d all go back to how it used to be. And Hermann… Hermann was his drift partner. He’d take Newt back in a heartbeat. Right? Right.

There’d probably be a lot of yelling and Newt would have to grovel a bit-maybe bring some flowers to their old lab, or some chocolates, or some really nice flavored lube and a willingness to deepthroat- but eventually Hermann would roll his eyes and humph and shuffle close until Newt could grab him by the sweatervest and get to making up for lost time.

Then maybe they’d set up in their old lab again and bicker happily ever after, till death or Newt doing something really wild do them part, Newt hadn’t really planned it out in detail.

Thinking about them being back in their old lab, back to Herms and Newt, settles something shaky and wobbly in his stomach. He feels lighter all of a sudden, and his hands aren’t shaking. He punches in Tendo’s number with a grin and a bit of flare, allowing himself a flourish on the last digit.

It rings for a really long time, and for a second he’s worried no one’s going to pick up. Then he hears a click and some incoherent grumbling.

“I swear to god, someone had better be dying,” Tendo moans.

Newt can’t control his grin. “Hell yeah I’m dying, dying from missing my fave J-tech man!”

There’s a beat. And then… “Newt, you have got to be fucking kidding me. Do you have any goddamn idea what time it is? Hell, do you have any idea what  _ year  _ it is?”

“Er,” Newt says, blinking. He had kind of forgotten time zones were a thing, to be honest. “It’s never too late to call up the light of my life, the bow tie master, sex god of the Sh-”

“I’m too tired for buttering up, dude, just tell me what the hell you want and let me get back to sleep. It’s Allison’s night to stay up with the twins and I am going to squeeze out every last second of sleep I can get.” He sounds hella tired, and Newt would love to get back to business, but-

“Twins? What the hell, man, when did that happen? Didn’t you just have one kid?”

A snort vibrates through his phones speakers. “Yeah, we only had one kid- two years ago. Once this whole terrible twos thing settles down we’re trying for another, but somehow I doubt you just called to get caught up on my kids.”

And, well, the man did say he was tired. “Soooo I was just calling to catch up, maybe see how our extended Shatterdome fam was doing, no one in particular but if you can give me the deets on Hermann and what he’s up to and how bad he’s going to kill me for going AWOL for three years I’ll be out of your irritatingly perfect hair.”

There’s a moment of silence and rustling noises. Then- “Newt, two things. One, I love you man, but you are way too manic and screechy for three in the fucking morning. Two, what the fuck.”

Newt winces and decides to hell with it, he wasn’t escaping this with his dignity in tact anyway. “Yeah, so, look, I know it’s not great but I kind of had a weird-ass… I guess it was an epiphany? The other day, and now I’m trying to come up with ways to woo Hermann because I miss his stupid grumpy face and his awful sweater vests and that smug boner I get whenever I get to prove him wrong.”

“Newt, you TMI me like that again I’m hanging up on you,” Tendo warns, which, whatever, Newt is a hot piece of ass, Tendo’s just jealous. “And also, may I just say, hell no.”

Newt frowns. “Hell no what? You’re not going to help a brother out?”

“No, you dick, I’m not helping you out.”

“Why the hell not?” Newt screeches into the receiver.

“ _ Jesus,  _ man, you sound like a kazoo giving birth, that’s almost reason enough. And I’m not getting involved because Hermann would be pissed and he’d probably kneecap me with his cane. Go somewhere else for info. In fact, go to Facebook,check his profile, check the Shatterdome page, you’ll probably find exactly what you’re looking for.”

“ _ Facebook? Who the hell even-”  _ Newt’s hit a decibel even he didn’t know he was capable of, and it seems like he’s finally worn out Tendo’s near-legendary patience because the asshole hangs up on him.

“Who the hell even uses Facebook anymore!?” Newt yells to the dial-tone instead. Because  _ seriously _ . He thought even the soccer moms had abandoned it by this point, but when he goes and logs on (it takes him twenty minutes, he made the profile when he was like thirteen and he used some weirdass email he lost the password to ages ago, so he has to jump through a lot of password recovery hoops to get in) he finds somewhere over a hundred friend requests languishing in his-inbox? Is that what they call it?

He’s all set to ignore those requests until he goes to Hermann’s page and sees it’s set to the highest privacy settings possible. So, okay, he has to be Hermann’s  _ friend  _ to get in.

For a second, Newt considers just giving in and showing up in Hong Kong- he bets Hermann’s still in the same apartment, and even if he isn’t Newt could just go to their old lab. Hermann spends all his time there anyway, it might just be more efficient. Hermann totally gets off on efficiency, he’d probably be so impressed by Newt’s planning skills that he’d swoon right there and he and Newt could totally make out in their old lab like Newt had fantasized about a thousand times.

Newt’s all set to go with this  _ totally genius idea  _ when the stuffy little voice at the base of his skull pipes out to point out that Newt had disappeared for three years and ignored quite a few phone calls and had left his side of the lab for Hermann to clean and box up, so a little bit more effort probably wouldn’t go amiss.

_ Ugh,  _ even in his head Hermann was a buzzkill.

Newt grumbles to himself before admitting the Herms-voice (he likes to imagine it as a little Hermann-angel sitting on his shoulder glaring at him and bitching under its breath) has a point; it would  _ really bad  _ if he went to Hong Kong and tried to sweep Hermann off his feet (figuratively, not literally, because that would be murder on Hermann’s leg) without even knowing basic stuff, like what sort of research he’s been doing and what is going on in the old Shatterdome.

He turns back to Facebook, even though it makes his rockstar heart shudder, and clicks on the neglected requests. 

There are ... a  _ lot,  _ holy shit. 

And of course fucking Facebook doesn’t have a search function for the friend requests, and he’s sure there must be some other way to do it but he hasn’t used Facebook since he was thirteen, okay? So he ends up doing it the old fashioned way, skimming through and looking at profile pictures and names and deleting every not-Hermann.

He’s totally given up even reading the names and is just looking at the pictures when he finally sees  _ it. _ A profile pic of a Feynman diagram drawn expertly in white chalk on an honest-to-god chalkboard. There’s only one person Newt knows who could possibly be that nerdy. Newt accepts the request without even bothering to read the name.

For a minute Newt is pretty sure the reward totally isn’t worth all that work. Hermann hasn’t posted anything in actual years, like, before-they-closed-the-Breach years. Newt figures he hasn’t had much going on to post about, Hermann is probably hella bored sitting in their lab without Newt there to poke and prod until he blows his top (how Hermann had managed to survive without Newt there to help shake loose the stick up his ass was a mystery.) But still Newt feels a bit cheated and he spares a moment to hope Hermann appreciates him subjecting himself to  _ Facebook  _ for love.

He’s about to click off-maybe go to the Shatterdome page like Tendo had mentioned- when he clicks on Hermann’s  _ About  _ page on a whim. He knows pretty much everything about the guy, so really it’s more idle curiosity and a hint of nostalgia. Everything is going pretty smoothly, he’s checking off all the boxes- birthday, workplaces, education, yadda yadda- when he swivels over to look at relationships. And then everything goes to hell in a handbasket, because it  _ doesn’t _ say  _ single _ , or even  _ it’s complicated _ , which Newt kind of would have expected, your drift partner and total love of your life dropping off the face of the earth for three years would count as complicated; instead it says  _ In a relationship with Carlos Hernandez.  _

In a fucking  _ relationship. _

  
What the  _ fucking fuck.  _


	3. My World Always Stays The Same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newt's famous ego and slight narcissistic streak takes a blow but comes back stronger than ever, he leaves to find his man, and suffers a near-death experience courtesy of Hermann's dress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never been to Hong Kong and I have exactly 0 idea what it's like. So sorry about any inaccuracies! Anyways, hope you guys enjoy this one, it's short bc I really REALLY wanted to write this part so I decided to post it early.

After having a minor freakout and trying to smother himself in his old brown corduroy couch cushions, Newt spends a few hours cyber-stalking this... _ Carlos.  _ He’s totally sure there’s no way this guy can even begin to compare to Newt, he must be some sort of totally lame second-rate Newt stand in to fill the void, but those convictions end up totally crushed as soon as he clicks on the name.

The guy is  _ gorgeous. _

Hermann is gorgeous too, but he’s kind of an acquired taste, you have to learn to look past the sweater-vests and the awful bowlcut/buzzcut hatechild to see the amazing bone structure and soulful brown eyes.

_ Carlos _ is the kind of soulful beauty that smashes you over the head as soon as you look at him, all perfect flowing chocolate-brown hair and dazzling, impeccable straight white teeth. He’s taller than Hermann, and he has the scientific chops to match Newt, if his profile is anything to go by. He’s like somebody yanked Hermann’s type straight out of his head and sculpted him lovingly out of  _ caramel _ , and made him bilingual and Spanish to boot- that’s like, the most romantic language! He even has the premature touch of grey at his temples that makes him look ‘distinguished’ while on Newt just ages him to a try-hard clinging desperately to his punk-rock youth.

So. Yeah. Newt’s kind of feeling way out-classed.

It only gets worse when he actually gets past the guy’s profile pic and About page (thankfully the dude has his page totally open, barely any privacy settings whatsoever, the showy jerk.) 

Because there are  _ pictures. _ Of Mr. Pantene Prick and Hermann, working together in the Shatterdome, sharing the old lab that used to be  _ Newt and Hermann’s. _

Pictures of the two of them on dates, Hermann wearing the flowy dresses Newt knew (from the Drift) that he loved but never dared wear because his dad was the  _ worst ever _ . Pictures of Carlos pulling a reluctant Hermann into another selfie, pictures of Carlos feeding a coy Hermann a bite from his plate in the Shatterdome cafeteria. That last one kills Newt, because Herms is looking up through his stupid eyelashes at stupid Carlos, and he’s got the sort of flickery scowl that means he wants to be disapproving but he’s trying not to smile.

That’s the picture that gets Newt and shakes him out of his little funk of self-pity. Because yeah, the guy may be hot, but Newt? Is a  _ rockstar _ . He’s Hermann’s Drift partner, his lab mate, his significant-almost, and he’s damned if he’s going to let some (admittedly really hot) science normie with only one PHD usurp his place.

“You may have chemistry with him,” Newt mutters, frantically googling Hong Kong flights, “but you have history with me.”

***

Nearly 23 hours later, Newt is standing red-eyed and manic in front of Hermann’s old apartment building. It’s way warmer here than it was in the US (Newt had been in Maine, according to Google’s location tracker, which, good to know) but the leaves on the few sad scraggly trees he can see are warm oranges and red and there’s the distinct lack of humidity Newt always associates with a Hong Kong fall.

God, he  _ hopes  _ Hermann is still here. It’s been three years since Hermann moved out of the Shatterdome and texted Newt his new address. Hermann is usually pretty damn hard to get moving once he’s settled, but Hong Kong apartments generally suck and maybe he’s decided to move.  _ Maybe even move in with Latino Fabio _ , a traitorous little voice whispers in his ear, but Newt flips it the mental bird and lets himself in.

Before the war, Hermann would probably have been shoved on the 20th floor, especially on a Shatterdome salary. Now, housing isn’t exactly at a premium. Before Newt can really prepare himself, he’s standing at Hermann’s door.

He stops a moment and just looks. It’s not like the door can give him any deep secrets into Herms and his brand new relationship, but…. Newt needs a moment. He’s been ignoring it until now, but there’s been a weird sensation welling up in the back of his head where the weak stream of Hermann’s thoughts usually reside.

It’s increased from the barest trickle to a babble, pooling right where his spine meets his skull and giving Newt a little tidepool of Hermann to look into, see delicately rendered mathematical models undulate in the flow of Hermann’s thoughts and watch passing memories and thoughts dart across this little mental microcosm. 

If Newt reaches down, dips into the foreign elements of Hermann’s consciousness and lets his fingertips brush one of the bright memories…

Suddenly he’s not in front of the door any more. He’s on the other side, belly tight with anticipation yet grounded by the familiar ache of his thigh. He’s wearing something cool and slippery and he feels a sort of illicit thrill in it, revelling in the newness and the slightest edge of embarrassment that makes the outfit all the more delightful. There’s cool air curling around his neck and back and a strangely familiar pressure building in the cup of his skull. He starts to turn around toward his door...

...And Newt drops back into his own body, blinking and pulling himself away from the pool of Hermann’s memories. 

The part of him that always is and always will be a scientist is fucking fascinated- so it’s not time but proximity that affects the post-Drift, he hasn’t had this strong a connection since before he left the Shatterdome- but the rest of him is just kind of terrified.

“Fortune favors the brave, dude,” he whispers, then throws caution to the wind and knocks wildly.

From behind the door, he hears Hermann’s muffled voice saying “Coming, Carlos, give me a moment,” but Newt doesn’t even have a solid second to panic before Hermann’s opening the door with the bright smile that frames his big brown doe-eyes in crow’s feet.

Hermann’s smile immediately drops off his face and for a second his face is just blank, and then his eyes widen in shock before narrowing in fury, and Newt wants to react, knows he needs to start talking  _ fast,  _ but, uh.

He thinks he may be dying, like, he feels like there are Poprocks going off in his brain, because Hermann. Looks incredible, and Newt may actually have a heart attack right fucking here.

He’s wearing a floor-length dress made of pure, forest-green silk with a slit nearly up to his hip flashing little slices of cream-pale thigh at Newt. Newt immediately imagines Hermann’s knees hooked over his shoulder, that amazing dress rucked up to his stomach and pooling cool slick dark green silk around the thick, heavy length of him, blushed dark red with aching arousal….

Newt wrenches his mind away-actually wrenches, it feels like it requires literal physical effort to refocus and pull his eyes from where that slit opens- and looks hesitantly at Hermann’s face. And flinches, because Hermann has on a dark, thundering scowl that shrivels Newt’s incipient boner because that is  _ not  _ the scowl that proceeds the sort of fun bickering that leaves Newt feebly hiding half a hard-on and Hermann limping more than usual.

“Hey, Herms,” he says awkwardly, scrubbing his hand in the hair at the base of his neck. Suddenly he really fucking wishes he had, like, dressed up or something, instead of wearing his tightest pair of skinny jeans, a torn old MCR t-shirt and a leather jacket.

Hermann’s mouth presses into an even thinner line than usual and his nostrils actually flare. “I have a strong desire to slam the door on you, but I have the horrible feeling you’d merely make a spectacle of yourself pounding on my door and I have no desire to receive more noise complaints from my neighbors.”

“Wait, more-?” Newt starts to ask, because Hermann is the quietest dude  _ ever  _ when he’s not hollering at Newt _ ,  _ what the hell, but Hermann interrupts him.

“So I suppose I must, against my better judgement, invite you in.” Without waiting for an answer, Hermann spins around- surprisingly gracefully, an odd movement balanced half on his cane and half on his good leg- and stalks back into his apartment.

Newt’s left staring at his back-the dress is  _ backless,  _ fuck, Newt wants to map every miniature peak and valley of Hermann’s vertebrae with his  _ tongue- _ and after a minute of lust-addled confusion he scampers forward.

This is absolutely not how he was expecting things to go, and suddenly he feels loose and unanchored. The weight of the old Drift connection is the only thing weighing him down, and he focuses on the familiar, comforting press of it as he hurries forward to a Hermann three years separated from the man he knew better than anyone else.


End file.
